WebProNews and the iEntry Network have launched a new WordPress plugin utilizing this tool. With WordPress being the most popular blogging platform, and Facebook being the most popular social network, we think a lot of people will be interested. 

"Registration is an integral part of any web presence," says Mike Marr, who developed the plugin. "It puts a name to our virtual guests – an otherwise very difficult task." 

"Facebook’s Registration Tool gives developers a familiar face from which users are encouraged to register, all the while streamlining the process for the vast number of existing Facebook users," he adds. "It makes sense that you would want this tool as a part of any website, including those powered by WordPress. Thus, we simply put the pieces of the puzzle together, and want to share with the community what we’ve come up with."

As Facebook’s Paul Tarjan explained when the company launched its tool, it can minimize the friction associated with signing up for a new account. That means a possible increase in conversions.  

Install the plugin from your WordPress back-end, or download it from WordPress here. To activate it, use the "plugins" menu option in your admin control panel. You’ll see a "Facebook Registration" options page under settings. Just enter your Facebook App ID and App Secret here. 

 The WordPress plugin requires WordPress version 3.0 or higher. Of course we would love feedback on the plugin, so if you have any comments or questions, or have issues with it, email developer Mike Marr at marr@beyondwp.com.

More info about the plugin can be found at BeyondWP.com.

But many online businesses may be making it too difficult for customers to hand over the cash, which is a bad business practice by any account.

Here’s what people (especially men) are used to:

I go into a store. I see something I want to buy. I give money to the salesperson. I leave with the thing I wanted to buy.

But what they’re experiencing in online shopping is often different. It goes more like this:

I see something I want to buy. Salesperson asks if I’m a registered user before I can buy thing I want to buy. I don’t remember if I’m in their special club or not, so I try many usernames, emails, and passwords. None of them work. Did I forget my password? Maybe. I’ll tell them my email address and then I’ll go check my email to see if they sent me the magic words that will let me buy the thing I want to buy. I check my email, but regardless of whether the magic words are there, I’ve now lost interest in (run out of time for, been distracted from, irritated about) buying the thing I had wanted to buy because they made it too much trouble to give them my money and leave with the thing I wanted to buy.

Okay, here are some concrete numbers:

• 75: The percentage of those clicking the “forgot password” button that don’t come back to finish the purchase.
• 23: The percentage of those abandoning the checkout process at the first sign of a registration prompt.
• 45: The percentage of registered customers who have bad memories and register multiple times, some as many as 10 times, meaning sites requiring registration might have inflated data.
• 300 million: The number of lost dollars one major retailer found after taking away the registration button.

Here’s a money quote:

"I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something." – Customer wanting to give money to retailer to buy the thing they wanted to buy.

Best course of action:

Make it easier for people to give you their money by not requiring they register to do so. Give them a choice to register so that it’s easier for them to give you their money more often in the future or to proceed to checkout where they can give you their money immediately without the hassle of becoming your friend.

Don’t believe me? Read these posts and decide for yourself:

The $300 Million Button
Required Registration Lowers Online Conversion Rates
Top 10 Online Retailers
Checkout Inspiration From Top Converting Sites

*Energy, lending, insurance, telecom, and cable businesses excluded.
 

NSFW, for Not Safe For Work, is one of those Internet memes that seems to have been around as long as the Web has supported image viewing. Generally, it refers to images that, if seen over one’s shoulder in the workplace by a particularly sensitive third party, could result in the viewer being fired.

Audio can be just as workplace-unfriendly as well. But sexual images hit a nerve with people, to the point where companies with Internet use policies make people agree not to view such content on their work computers.

NSFW has been around in general usage for years, but good luck pinning down the first time it was used. We can’t imagine Curtis sending out the lawyers against anyone who forwards a link to someone with NSFW tacked on to it as a warning, should the USPTO grant the trademark.

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Post #1 contains such gems as Empowerforisvsenroll.com, extendersformediacenter.com (Microsoft just keeps buying Media Center Extender domains), healthvault-int.com (for the recently launched Health Vault), Directmusic.org, mom-live.com (because of Real Live Moms), secure-hotmail.com, windows-vista.net and windowsvista-forum.com.

The second post has so many domains, they’re on a seperate page. They include lots of “hyper-v”-related domains, whatever that is, including hyper-vclub, hyper-vdownload, hyper-vstore. I’m seeing a bunch of sites speculating as to what hyper-v is, and why Microsoft needed to buy up tens of domains containing the term. If you’ve got a clue, let me know. I’m anticipating Microsoft launching a new brand of some sort under the Hyper-V name.

The third post contains 3DMaptour.com (related to new Live Maps features), Cycle-on.org, Innovateonmobile.com (gotta compete with that iPhone), Antispymobile.com (could a mobile device antispyware tool be coming?) and Visualbasicsucks.com.

And, finally, the fourth post contains Findmediacenter.com, Federatedidentity.net, Journeyzune.org, Vboxlab.com and Msglobalexpo.com (Microsoft Expo? I’m in!).

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Chad Johnson, a wide receiver with the Cincinnati Bengals, known for his over the top end zone antics is asking fans to share their best touchdown dance moves.

Users can submit up to 30 seconds of video until August 20, 2007. A Yahoo Sports committee will choose the top five videos as finalists. After the finalists are selected, users can vote online for what they think is the best video from August 22,2007 until September 4, 2007. The winner of Chad Johnson’s Touchdown Celebration Showdown will be announced on September 6, 2007.

"When it comes to touchdown dances, you’ve already seen some of my best end zone celebrations."

"Now, it’s your turn to show me what you got!" said Johnson. "Don’t let all the celebrating make you forget to draft me for your Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football ’07 team this year."

Registration for Yahoo Sports Fantasy Football runs through October 12, 2007.

"Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football is one of the greatest dynasties in sports today. Over the past decade we have established the most popular and reliable fantasy football service for players of all levels," said Jimmy Pitaro, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Sports.

People’s Daily Online said prominent Internet companies complained about the registration requirement, one that the central government has long coveted. Instead of a compulsory registration, bloggers will be encouraged to place their names on that list.

Such registration would be a persistent reminder to bloggers that publishing content deemed harmful could get them into deep trouble. It wouldn’t be outright censorship, but a subtle scheme that would make bloggers censor themselves.

Internet businesses of influence in China opposed the registration requirement. Chief executives from both Sohu.com and Bokee.com denounced it in the report. They cited the costs involved with verifying identities, and the ability for bloggers to simply open blogs outside the country, as reasons to back away from the plan.

This information “will be checked against a database to verify the user – or at least the person whose data has been entered – is old enough,” reports Martyn Williams of the IDG News Service.

This concept may not be quite as Big Brother-ish as it sounds; those resident registration numbers are just the Korean version of American social security numbers, and the age limit will only restrict the searches of users who are 18 and under.  Google is also going to make an effort to differentiate between “innocent” searches and, well, less-than-innocent ones (searches for “breast cancer” compared to searches for “breasts,” for example).

Still, it seems that Google didn’t want to enact these restrictions, and is doing so just to appease the Korean government and get a PR boost in that country.  Kim Kyung-mo, an analyst with Mirae Asset, told the Korea Times that the move “may be a harbinger to indicate that Google is ready to fully compete here after years of struggles.”

The article, written by Kim Tae-gyu, then notes, “Google debuted Korean-language services in 2001 but failed to be a contender . . . .  Experts raised many reasons for the setbacks and one of the most frequently cited ones is that it failed to become part of the cultural fabric of Korean society as demonstrated by the adult authentication that many Koreans deem very important.”

Utah Law Bans Competitor Keyword Bids

Using a competitor keyword or phrase to trigger an advertisement online in Utah is against the law. The passage of the Trademark Protection Act in Utah would require search engines to check a database of registered trademarks to avoid displaying ads in this way.

The profitability angle for Utah can’t be ignored. An annual fee of no more than $250 would be charged for each registered electronic mark under the law. Utah would reap an enormous windfall from brand name advertisers who wish to circumvent Google’s lawful practice of not investigating keywords as trademarks used to trigger ads in the US.

If you are looking for people who think this law is a bad idea, you’ll be spoiled for choice at the selection. You can start with Utah’s own General Counsel; they appended a legislative review note to the proposed act in the weeks leading up to its passage.

In summary, the General Counsel found problems with the Act as written:

Because of the potential impact on interstate commerce from the state’s regulation of electronic registration mark use on Internet search engines, this legislation has a high probability of being held to be unconstitutional.

The Commerce Clause to the United States Constitution provides that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. (U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 8). This provision also has a “dormant” aspect that “prohibits state . . . regulation that discriminates against or unduly burdens interstate commerce.”

Search engines would either have to check every ad request to see if a user in Utah was making it, then check the search terms against the database of electronic registration marks for possible trademark issues.

Utah’s General Counsel office also considered the possibility that search engines would have to check every user query against the Utah database to avoid the need to determine someone’s location. “Any benefit to the state from this legislation is likely substantially outweighed by the burden on every Internet search engine or similar system to re- engineer its systems and constantly check the search terms or the location of a user,” they noted.

That potential would trigger the dormant aspect of the Commerce Clause. The Electronic Frontier Foundation commented on issues with Utah’s passage of the bill:

Aside from its constitutional flaws, the law is just bad public policy. It undermines the fundamental purpose of trademarks: to improve consumer access to accurate information about goods and services. Trademarks are just shorthand terms that designate the origin of a product.

Banning such competitor trademark usage would undermine legally permitted comparative advertising, according to the EFF’s Corynne McSherry. “That’s why comparative trademark use is clearly protected under federal trademark law. If it weren’t, Pepsi wouldn’t be able to tell consumers that more people think Pepsi tastes better than Coke,” she wrote.

Danny Sullivan brought up a scenario suggesting one difficulty Utah’s trademark system would have with this law:

Can you imagine registering common words like “Orange” or “Egg” or, hmm, “Apple” for protection? Then someone wants to use these words in a non-competitive way. How can the system automatically know this?

It’s difficult to see Utah’s Trademark Protection Act as anything more than a blatant money grab. Let the Constitutional challenges begin.

I will compare SEO statistics and information about the age of domain, length of domain registration, domain characteristics, backlinks, Technorati links, .edu links, Alexa Rank, Page Strength, indexed pages, supplemental results, name search on Google, other search terms on Google, and pay-per-click. The order of candidates is listed in order of “rank” within each category of statistics.

Age of Domain

This comes from either Alexa data or WHOIS data. The age of domain is important in SEO because older sites typically hold more credibility and trust with search engines.

Hillary Clinton – 22-Oct-2001
John Edwards – 16-Jul-1998
Barack Obama – 28-Dec-2004
John McCain – 17-Jul-1997
Mitt Romney – 08-Feb-2002
Rudy Giuliani – 17-Nov-2006

Length of Domain Registration

This statistic looks at how many years the domain has been registered for beyond the create date (based on WHOIS data), and the candidates are listed in descending order of year that the domain expires. It’s considered good SEO practice to register a domain for a longer amount of time (5+ years)

John McCain – 15 years, expires 26-Jan-2017
Hillary Clinton – 15 years, expires 22-Oct-2016
Barack Obama – 11 years, expires 28-Dec-2015
John Edwards – 11 years, expires 14-Jul-2009
Mitt Romney – 8 years, expires 08-Feb-2010
Rudy Giuliani – 2 years, expires 17-Nov-2008

Type in Domain

Everyone except Rudy Giuliani has a perfect type in domain for their name, so you can just type in their name, add the .com and you’re at their site. This may hurt Rudy a little, but his last name is hard to remember how to spell for many so perhaps joinrudy2008.com is better in some ways.

Backlinks

Backlinks, or inbound links, are how many sites link to your site. These figures are from Yahoo.

Barack Obama – 119,909
Hillary Clinton – 79,219
Mitt Romney – 39,245
Rudy Giuliani – 38,236
John Edwards – 15,498
John McCain – 7,428

Technorati Links

This is used as a measure of popularity in the blogosphere world. The more the better.

Barack Obama – 6,527
John Edwards – 4,952
Hillary Clinton – 3,710
Mitt Romney – 1,756
John McCain – 670
Rudy Giuliani – 342

.edu links

Links from educational institutions are regarded as passing more weight or confidence as a backlink, and are highly desirable (and hard to get).

Hillary Clinton – 97
Barack Obama – 87
John Edwards – 35
Mitt Romney – 33
Rudy Giuliani – 21
John McCain – 0

Alexa Rank

I know Alexa isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting comparison. The lower the number, “the better”. The number represents the rank of the website out of the top websites on the Internet in terms of traffic. The most visited site on the Internet is ranked 1. A zero (0) means either an error or not enough traffic to rank.

Barack Obama – 12,581
Hillary Clinton – 18,727
John Edwards – 33,485
Mitt Romney – 129,490
John McCain – 178,788
Rudy Giuliani – 0

Page Strength

John Edwards – 6.5/10
Hillary Clinton – 5.5/10
Barack Obama – 5/0
Mitt Romney – 4/10
Rudy Giuliani – 3.5/10
John McCain – 3.5/10

Indexed Pages

Google and Yahoo both give a different number of pages in their index, so I’ll show both, Google/Yahoo.

John Edwards – 4230/66
John McCain – 457/155
Hillary Clinton – 387/1133
Mitt Romney – 309/157
Barack Obama – 148/525
Rudy Giuliani – 91/34

Supplemental Results

If pages show up as supplemental results (use this query, just change domain) it means they aren’t carrying as much as weight as they could be and their rankings probably suffer. The figure shown below is supplemental/total indexed, as well as what percent of pages are supplemental results out of their total number of indexed pages (both from Google). Lower % is better.

John Edwards – 260/4230 (6%)
Mitt Romney – 71/309 (23%)
John McCain – 104/457 (23%)
Barack Obama – 35/148 (24%)
Rudy Giuliani – 38/91 (42%)
Hillary Clinton – 168/387 (43%)

Name search on Google

If you type in the candidate’s name in Google, where does their “official” election site come up in the SERPs?

Hillary Clinton – 1st result
Barack Obama – 1st result
John Edwards – 1st result
Mitt Romney – 1st result
Rudy Giuliani – 2nd result, 1st is Wikipedia entry
John McCain – 33rd result, 1st is his Senate page

Rankings for name, party, etc

Terms searched for included: presidential election, presidential candidates, 2008 elections, compare candidates, and candidates issues. The top 100 results were checked for each search term. If no ranking is listed below, the candidates site does not rank in the top 100 for that term.

Barack Obama – #35 for presidential candidates, #66 for candidates issues
Hillary Clinton – (none)
John Edwards – (none)
John McCain – (none)
Mitt Romney – (none)
Rudy Giuliani – (none)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Terms searched for included: presidential election, presidential candidates, 2008 elections, compare candidates, candidates issues, democrat, democratic party, republican, and republican party. Certainly there are many others I could have typed for but these are ones I thought would be critical to any PPC campaign.

Barack Obama – presidential election, presidential candidates, 2008 elections, democrat, democratic party,
John McCain – presidential election, presidential candidates
Hillary Clinton – (none)
John Edwards – (none)
Mitt Romney – (none)
Rudy Giuliani – (none)

Obviously we are very early on in the elections, but certainly SEO efforts should be underway if they are going to occur at all. In some ways it is evident there are definitely SEO strategies in place, but what about the lack of PPCWhat are some of your observations?

Also check out my post from yesterday about what Analytics programs the Presidential Candidates are using.

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During the grace period, the entrepreneur puts up a Web page featuring keyword search ads and receives a commission on each ad clickedAddresses likely to generate more than the $6 annual cost of domain name are kept – not a high threshold given how lucrative search advertising is these daysThe rest are thrown back into the pool on the fourth or fifth day, only to be grabbed by another group of domain name tasters.

How many people are actually engaging this practice? Of the domain names registered in 2006, only 2% of them were legitimate with an estimated 1.2 million domain names a day tested by marketers known as "tasters".

Ok, so here’s a question for you

1. Who knew about this loophole?

2. Who’s actively "tasting" domain names?

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